ESX XP VM more than 2 vprocs?

[cmorris05]

I have a piece of software I would like to run on an XP VM, however I need to have 4 processors. Does VMware not support more then 2 processors on an XP VM? If I use a Server 2003 VM and install XP with 4 procs will that cause a problem?

Thank you

[Cameron2007]

the number of processors that can be used by the guest OS is usually determined by the amount of processors on the ESX host. If you have 4 on the host you should be able to add them. I think XP pro can support 2 Physical Processors, and up to 4 logical processors. Meaning you can have 2 processor with hypterthreading enabled

[weinstein5]

ESX supports 1,2 or 4 virtual processors - so you can build a VM with 4 virtual CPUs but if the operating system does not support 4 CPUs than you will be wasting resources and negatively impacting the perfomance of the VM - I do not believe XP supports more than 2 CPUs - Server 2003 I know supports 4 CPUs - the question I have is what application you are running in that requires 4 CPUs? VMware best practice is to use as few processors as possible for your VM - I tell all my clients to start wth a single virtual CPU and see how the perfomance is and add virtual CPUs if only needed -

[cmorris05]

Thank you for your help, I realized I made a stupid mistake. I was thinking processors along the lines of Dual and Quad Core, but since those are still on one processor, XP still sees it as one processor.

[Dave_Mishchenko]

Your post has been moved to the VI: Virtual Machine and Guest OS forum.

Dave Mishchenko

VMware Communities User Moderator

PS - you can mark individual posts as correct (up to 1 post) / helpful (up to 2 posts). That will assign points to the users that helped you out.